Pentagon: Oh, by the way, Iran fired at a U.S. drone in the Persian Gulf seven days ago

posted at 8:59 pm on November 8, 2012 by Allahpundit

Just something that slipped their mind. Happened five days before a presidential election, they revealed it two days after the election. Perfectly up-and-up.

Here’s the real question: Why’d Iran fire on it?

Spokesman George Little said the incident, which marks the first time the Iranians have fired on a U.S. drone, occurred Nov. 1 at 4:50 a.m. ET. He said the unarmed, unmanned drone was conducting “routine surveillance” over the Persian Gulf when it was “intercepted” by Iran. He said the MQ1 Predator drone, which was not hit, was not in Iranian airspace.

According to Little, two Iranian jets fired twice, missing on both attempts — the drone headed away from the Iranian coast, landing safely soon after at an undisclosed location. The Iranian jets pursued the drone for a short period before giving up…

Little stressed that the drone was flying 16 nautical miles off the coast of Kuwait in international waters, and never entered the 12-mile limit that would constitute Iranian territory.

The temptation here is to wonder whether Iran was trying to bait O into some sort of conflict right before the election. I’m skeptical, just because there are much surer ways they could have done that if they wanted to. In fact, two days ago, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence published a report on a potential war with Israel that was actually somewhat conciliatory towards Obama:

The report, titled “Reasons and Obstacles of a Military Attack by the Zionist Regime Against Iran,” also makes a clear distinction between positions on Iran’s nuclear program held by the Israeli government and the U.S. administration. It says President Obama “hopes to solve this issue peacefully and through diplomacy.” It goes on to say that Obama does not think Iran’s enrichment program, which Iran insists is solely for peaceful purposes, is an imminent threat and that, in addition to diplomacy, he thinks “severe sanctions” can help control the situation.

With Obama’s reelection Tuesday, there is guarded hope in Tehran and Washington that a solution agreeable to all parties in the nuclear standoff might finally be possible.

Strange tone to take if they’re trying to pick a fight. Either a couple of pilots went rogue, possibly because they misjudged where the drone was vis-a-vis Iranian airspace, or the regime ordered the lamest, most easily ignored sort of provocation in hopes of … forcing an aggressive response? Like I say, if they wanted to do that, why not attack a U.S. ship in the Gulf and guarantee it?

As for why the Pentagon refused to mention this until now, I invite military readers to speculate. If there was some sort of election-related gag order issued, I assume it’s less because O thought revealing this would absolutely hurt him than because it would introduce an element of unpredictability that could go either way. Romney obviously would have used it as evidence of weakness: Iran wouldn’t dare take potshots at an American drone with a Republican in office, etc. Problem is, that argument didn’t do much for him as applied to Benghazi. And given the moronic applause for O’s handling of the hurricane, there may well have been some sort of “rally ’round the flag” effect in the last few days that ended up boosting Obama’s numbers. If I were him, that would have been my biggest worry from a strictly political standpoint — that if the Pentagon announced what happened days before the polls opened, the opposition would use it as an excuse to discredit my victory. “Obama only won because of that dirty trick involving the drone.” He probably figured it wasn’t worth rolling the dice in putting it out there before the vote.

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The Iranian jets pursued the drone for a short period before giving up…

If true then Israel should get every plane in their nation in the air towards Iran right now; F16’s, Mysteres, Hornets, Piper Cubs, Biplanes, those rubber-band powered prop toys, balsa gliders, everything.

Big deal, who cares, us? America has more important things to think about like their vaginas, free birth control, abortion on demand, whitey putting everyone back in chains, making rap music illegal, outlawing tampons…you know.

Tell any loved ones you have it’s time to leave the military. We appreciate their service and a job well done. But now it’s the left’s turn to defend our country.

I’d like to see Fox News do a “news you don’t give a sh*t about” segment each night:

“Iran is shooting at our drones. The Obama administration kept that from you until after the election. But, you know, you don’t really give a sh*t, so whatevs.”

“We gave a bunch of guns to the Mexican drug cartels. They’re killing people with them. American people. Yeah, yeah. We know. You don’t give a sh*t.”

“Our Ambassador to Libya was raped and murdered by terrorists. The Obama administration lied to you about that. They’re still lying. And they’ve sent a guy in California to prison for a year to cover up their lies. But whatever. You don’t give a sh*t.”

“Fired”? Why use that word? That’s a provocative word. Perhaps it was some kind of spontaneous kinetic protest or demonstration, or an accident, or something. Let’s investigate for a few months, or years, or however long it takes to get to the truth of the matter.

On a serious note, anyone who has a loved one in the military needs to tell them that we are thankful for their patriotism, service and a job well done. However, it’s time for them to let the leftist who voted for Obama to step up and do their part. It’s going to get bad across the world in a second Obama term. Let the Obamaites handle it.

They missed because the Frogfoot aircraft is not designed for air to air combat, it is a ground attack aircraft with no air to air radar. Likely target of opportunity incident or the Iranian Air Force is lead by complete idiots and that isn’t likely. They could have only used older variant IR missiles which is probably why they missed.

I haven’t seen anything in the last four years that would have guaranteed a response from Obama over something as trivial as attacking a US ship. If they wanted a response, they’d have to run around one of his putting greens wearing cleats.

I haven’t seen anything in the last four years that would have guaranteed a response from Obama over something as trivial as attacking a US ship. If they wanted a response, they’d have to run around one of his putting greens wearing cleats.

DrAllecon on November 8, 2012 at 9:19 PM

Ever hear of a trial balloon? No response to this and things will escalate. I expect things to escalate.

No, they didn’t. The Su-25 wasn’t designed to be a counter-air fighter and the Iranians don’t use the airframe that way. Their front-line fighter aircraft are the Chinese F-7s and the US-made F-4s, old as the latter are.

Su-25 pilots aren’t your guys for coordinating a fighter-pair attack on an aircraft in flight. But from Iran’s perspective, the old Su-25s they got from Saddam in 1991 — when he sent them to Iran to survive Desert Storm, and Iran took possession of them — are more expendable than their fighters. (Iran got more Su-25s from Russia in 2006.) Looks to me like the Iranians hoped to get lucky without having to risk too much.

ROTFLMAO… True, but damn it, it take sooo long to get those hot Air balloons ready for flight… o_O

SWalker on November 8, 2012 at 9:28 PM

Yeah, there’s that. Seriously, though, Iran has fighters that have a hope of shooting down a Predator. But she didn’t send those aircraft for this mission. She didn’t even send fighters; she send two Su-25s, whose primary counter-air tactic is to shriek “HELP!!!!!!!”

Yeah, there’s that. Seriously, though, Iran has fighters that have a hope of shooting down a Predator. But she didn’t send those aircraft for this mission. She didn’t even send fighters; she send two Su-25s, whose primary counter-air tactic is to shriek “HELP!!!!!!!”

J.E. Dyer on November 8, 2012 at 9:38 PM

ROTFLMAO… aint that the truth, Iran’s top of the line fighter’s have what a 35 second window after radar contact before a F18 blows them out of the sky?

I notice that US spokesman always say Arabian Gulf instead of Persian Gulf. This is intended to be an insult to Iran, isn’t it?

Mark1971 on November 8, 2012 at 9:36 PM

That’s one of those things that go back and forth. The military switched from “Arabian Gulf” to “Persian Gulf” when we pulled US forces out of Saudi Arabia in 2003. Now it looks like we’re back to “Arabian Gulf.”

It was “Persian Gulf,” of course, up to 1979. Before then, the US was friends with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Since ’79, our commitment to not recognizing the Persian Gulf as an Iranian lake has waxed and waned. Referring to the “Arabian Gulf” is one of those cheap rhetorical things the Obama administration sets so much store by, in its annoying way.

The SU-25′s gun is angled downward because it is designed for use in ground attacks.

So that’s why they were missing low. Their gun really isn’t designed at all for what they were doing. Dunno why they used it.

Spade on November 8, 2012 at 9:43 PM

It was a political media propaganda ploy. If the US had shot it down, they would have claimed the Su-25 was legally and lawfully protecting Iranian Air Space and the Fifth Column Treasonous Media would have 100 percent agreed with them.

For the exact same reason that Palestinians put perfectly health people on stretchers and cover them with blood while claiming that Israel is murdering their innocent civilians. It’s a political propaganda war.

One can kind of understand the military sitting on this, if they were so ordered. However this needs to be recorded as example # 78456 of why the Journo-List 2.0 media needs to be formally recognized as the Ministry of Truth, so no one will accidentally identify them as reporters.

If it came out that after a Republican president was re-elected it was revealed that a foreign nation had attacked one of our drones in international airspace and the attack had been concealed till after the election …. dogs in Tibet would be howling from the high pitched screaming of the press.

Did they really want to see if the Obama admin would say something about it before the election, because apparently that is all they learned from this exercise.

farsighted on November 8, 2012 at 9:49 PM

They may have simply wanted to know what we would do: what our tactical as well as national-policy reaction would be.

Our tactical reaction was to send the Predator back to base rather than finish the mission. Of course, we don’t know what will be done about resuming Predator flights in this area.

It’s really a bigger issue than this one Keystone Kops episode with Iran.

If you’ve got a drone mission track you want to use over and over, do you dispatch USAF alert fighters from Qatar (or northern Gulf CAP; not sure what we maintain at the moment) to protect the drone when it’s menaced? Is that a good — or even doctrinal — use of the relevant assets?

If you don’t protect the drone, you’ll probably just lose the mission track covering the geography where you want collection. Maybe you’ll have to use manned collection assets and ensure they have fighter protection on call. It’s not like we don’t know how to do that. We’ve been doing it for over 70 years.

But beyond the operational question about platform use, there’s the political question of how hard we take it when someone menaces our drone, and how much we simply give up on because “it’s only a drone.” It’s the point of drones that they’re not manned, but if the operating environment is non-permissive, that point has, if you will, no geopolitical home. There’s nothing conventional that we do about this stuff.

Exit question: if we flee and lodge a protest when Iran shoots at our drone, what will we do if China menaces our satellite? It’s unmanned, after all. It’just a bunch of inanimate material flung into space.

Did I hear the Pentagon spokesman say the drone was fired upon with guns?
Where does this discussion about missiles fit?

News2Use on November 8, 2012 at 10:00 PM

Guns are more likely. My point was that, at most, the Iranian Su-25s could have had the old FSU air-to-air missiles. The Su-25 has a 30mm cannon and if the Pentagon guy said “guns,” that’s what the Frogfoot would have fired.

Exit question: if we flee and lodge a protest when Iran shoots at our drone, what will we do if China menaces our satellite? It’s unmanned, after all. It’just a bunch of inanimate material flung into space.

J.E. Dyer on November 8, 2012 at 10:08 PM

Precisely why, I think, we shuttered down on this incident. However, we are dealing with a military/diplomatic matrix with this WH that would take Houdini or, perhaps, Rainman, to divine.

But beyond the operational question about platform use, there’s the political question of how hard we take it when someone menaces our drone, and how much we simply give up on because “it’s only a drone.” It’s the point of drones that they’re not manned, but if the operating environment is non-permissive, that point has, if you will, no geopolitical home. There’s nothing conventional that we do about this stuff.

Exit question: if we flee and lodge a protest when Iran shoots at our drone, what will we do if China menaces our satellite? It’s unmanned, after all. It’just a bunch of inanimate material flung into space.

J.E. Dyer on November 8, 2012 at 10:08 PM

And the biggest problem we have right now, is that their is nobody in the Obama Administration capable of grasping the tactical implications of exactly what you are describing. If we cease drone overflights for the mission track covering the geography in question, Iran has then strategically outmaneuvered us and created an denial of information zone.

In surrendering that tactical advantage to Iran it sends a signal to china that they can also employ similar tactics in their theaters of operation. From a strategic and tactical point of view that is a very dangerous situation to find ourselves in.

Yep. If Obama rolls over for this, Iran has actually gotten a big bang for her bottom dollar. Iran risked as little as she could get away with. If the endstate is “US changes operating profile,” that’s some of the cheapest, most significant information ever established for those who hate truth, justice, and the American way.

Yep. If Obama rolls over for this, Iran has actually gotten a big bang for her bottom dollar. Iran risked as little as she could get away with. If the endstate is “US changes operating profile,” that’s some of the cheapest, most significant information ever established for those who hate truth, justice, and the American way.

J.E. Dyer on November 8, 2012 at 10:25 PM

God help us, cause it really doesn’t look like anyone in the Obamanation Administration has the slight idea what strategy or tactics are, that is providing that they aren’t actual Manchurian candidates.

They also didn’t intend to hit it. Why give Obama any chance to actually shoot down an Iranian plan and act tough just before the election.

They simply tested Obama to confirm their hypothesis that he is weak and impotent.

If Obama says before the election that Iran fired on a US drone, and admits that nothing was done to retaliate, they get the bonus of humiliating a US president without too much of a risk of him losing the election.
> They can anticipate that the chances that Obama would get reelected by by the useful idiots who are liberals in this country exceeded the chance of Romney getting elected. (What would Romney do if he was elected anyway? Nothing… he wouldn’t be able to address anything until after he was inaugurated… & by then it would be old news.)

If Obama hides the fact that Iran fired on a US drone until after the election, this gives Iran more flexibility to be provocative, without worrying as much about retaliation… and that the US media would kiss Obama’s ass to cover it up… just like Benghazi.

Iran wins either way. They know that they have the ability to poke at the US, which to them is now only a paper tiger – who else is saying this? Al Qaida.

If US intervention is simply now defined as a harsh statement of disapproval vs some bombing at its worst (e.g. Libya). Seeing that the US Ambassador to Libya was so easily killed, and that resulted in absolutely NO retaliation, and left good men fighting alone to die without support.

Iran is quite comfortable pushing the limits with Hezbollah & the occasional missile fired at a drone or patrolling US plane. Remember, Obama did nothing during the Iranian Green Revolution, and currently is doing nothing in Syria – where Iran actually has troops.

Regarding Afghanistan, as the “Commander-in-Chief” of US armed forces, he is allowing troops on the ground to be murdered by the Afghans they trained – again without retaliation. The “Pussy-in Chief” was even so stupid as to telegraph when US troops would be out of Afghanistan, so there would be no US retaliation from their far eastern flank. So why should they worry?

God help us, cause it really doesn’t look like anyone in the Obamanation Administration has the slight idea what strategy or tactics are, that is providing that they aren’t actual Manchurian candidates.

SWalker on November 8, 2012 at 10:32 PM

At some point, if it goes as I fear it will vis a vis Iran, and the ultimate cratering of our non-nuke “policy”, the operational flag officers may well crack down on the political ones and Obama himself. And, you know what, if it gets to that, I don’t have a problem with it.
Our military, the real military, is the only thing left standing anymore between tyranny and liberty. It was such from the beginning, and it is today.

But beyond the operational question about platform use, there’s the political question of how hard we take it when someone menaces our drone, and how much we simply give up on because “it’s only a drone.” It’s the point of drones that they’re not manned, but if the operating environment is non-permissive, that point has, if you will, no geopolitical home. There’s nothing conventional that we do about this stuff.

Exit question: if we flee and lodge a protest when Iran shoots at our drone, what will we do if China menaces our satellite? It’s unmanned, after all. It’just a bunch of inanimate material flung into space.

J.E. Dyer on November 8, 2012 at 10:08 PM

It’s an interesting question that has to be sorted out as part of our evolution to unmanned ‘stuff’. Eventually we will have B-2 comparable unmanned bombers and unmanned submarines. Is destroying one less an act of war because it’s unmanned?

You also have to wonder if this isn’t the first fruit of America’s response to Benghazi. If jihadis are allowed unhindered to roast our ambassador on a spit, there are obviously new limits to be explored. It doesn’t matter anymore if Obama eventually checks a few new names off his death list; it’s his inaction during the chaos that telegraphs “power vacuum” to every thug on the planet.

I visualize guys right now frantically cobbing together the hardware to give a very bad surprise to the next Iranian fighter to fire on a UAV of ours.

I’m thinking targeting radar and a Sidewinder missile or two. Wouldn’t it be sweet. I visualize headlines… “US Drone Fired On, Blasts Two Iranian Fighters From Sky” I visualize a Predator with two silouettes of Iranian fighters painted on its nose. So sweet.

As they say, it is easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission, especially with That Person in the White House.

The Iranian jets pursued the drone for a short period before giving up…

If true then Israel should get every plane in their nation in the air towards Iran right now; F16′s, Mysteres, Hornets, Piper Cubs, Biplanes, those rubber-band powered prop toys, balsa gliders, everything.

My first thought on hearing this was that the Iranians wanted to boost Mr Romney’s chances of winning.

My reason for thinking this is my long-held hypothesis that the Iranians are trying to provoke an attack on themselves because such an attack will give them victim status that will greatly facilitate their long-term goal of acquiring nuclear weapons.

My guess, therefore, is that the Iranians expect Mr Obama and his colleagues to be more passive than Mr Romney and his colleagues.